Bush keeps faith in war plan

President persists despite critics' calls for pullout

August 27, 2007|By STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times

CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush's Iraq strategy faces a crisis of faith these days - from the American public. And he is confronting it the way he has previous crises: with a relentless campaign to persuade people to see things his way.

Bush interrupted his annual August retreat here last week for a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars replete with historical references to Vietnam, including a surprising citation from Graham Greene's The Quiet American.

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," he quoted from the book, apparently in a bid to rebut those, like Greene, who considered American intervention in Vietnam ill-advised.

Bush, back at the Prairie Chapel Ranch, went on to record a radio address that indicated neither doubt nor any intention of reducing the American commitment in Iraq.

On Tuesday, he will make another speech in Reno, Nev., arguing that a hasty withdrawal of troops would prove disastrous for the Middle East and for American security.

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," Bush said in the radio address broadcast Saturday, as if there were not those who wished the country was in the later stages, preparing to bring the troops home.

Bush's strategy is as unwavering as it is familiar. In military parlance, it is called preparing the battlefield - in this case, for the series of reports and hearings scheduled on Capitol Hill next month to debate the wisdom of struggling on in the midst of Iraq's sectarian chaos and bloodshed.

If recent history is a guide, Bush might prevail, as he did in January when he made a similar blitz to build the case for dispatching more troops to Iraq, despite swelling public opposition to the war and a Democratic rout in last November's congressional elections.

"If there's one thing that they're good at, it is their ability to campaign for something," said Tara McGuinness, deputy campaign manager for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a coalition of anti-war groups.

Public opinion about the war remains sour.

Republicans appear increasingly frustrated. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., last week called for at least a symbolic reduction of troops by Christmas.

Critics have called Bush's ever-upbeat message delusional. His rationale for the war has shifted so much since 2003 that any new pitch will have skeptics. His analogies last week between the war in Iraq and World War II, the Korean War and, especially, the Vietnam War were ridiculed by some as revisionist or inaccurate.

"I know that all the PR in the world didn't change the truth on the ground in Vietnam and won't change the truth on the ground today in Iraq," Max Cleland, a Vietnam War veteran and former Democratic senator from Georgia, said in a radio rebuttal Saturday.

On Tuesday, Bush is to appear before the American Legion in Reno and follow up on last week's VFW speech. Freedom's Watch, a new group with close ties to the White House, joined Bush's effort last week with a $15 million advertising campaign that revives "cut and run" accusations against critics of the war. One of its leaders, Ari Fleischer, the former White House spokesman, said Bush was doing what was necessary to explain why he was keeping the nation in a war.

"Any president that fails to communicate that will lose public support," Fleischer said. "That's where we are today."